From my journal at the retreat:

I should appreciate what I have here on my first night at the monastery. It is quiet. Supper was almost surreal. Everyone stood behind their chair, saying nothing. Then brother Stephen came in, dressed in a plaid shirt, jeans, and slippers. He is elderly and had trouble: he couldn’t stop yawning and kept forgetting where he was in his little talk about how everything operates. We are to observe silence if we can, and we are to help clean up after lunch and dinner. Otherwise we are on our own. He might be a little dotty, but he has a real sweetness and a sense of humor. He also has two cats, which have now been banished to the outside. One is named Boop, for Betty Boop. The other is Gonza, short for Gonzaga, where brother Stephen went to school. I’ll look for them tomorrow.

The setting here is beautiful. We are on the western bank of the Shenndoah. Mostly all you can see are trees and fields until dark when you can see the lights from all the big resort style houses that have been built up the slope of the Blue Ridge. When we went out for Complines after dinner it was pitch dark and I kept walking off the road. Now I know why I was advised to bring a flashlight. I was walking with a young seminarian who has been here twice before. We did not speak much. Once we are outside, working in the kitchen, or want to use the conference room we can chatter a bit.

The big monastery is painted a light blue-grey. The core seems to be a massive square stone farm house built over two hundred years ago, matched by a newer building connected to the first by a long wing. This is the Chapel. Outside it is nondescript and inside is spare but beautiful. A large crucifix of Christ in Agony is suspended from the ceiling. Behind it on the wall is a sculpted image of Mary and infant. There is a lot of Marian iconography in the guest house too. The last thing the monks did at Complines was sing a hymn to the Virgin.

At the service there were only ten monks, and all but three were ancient. They all do a deep bow at the spots were other Catholics merely genuflect. The singing is moving even though it seems to depend on one brother with a good voice. Later I discovered that when that one monk was gone, the other brothers merely recite the service. They also do the recitations and the bibile lessons much more slowly than is usual in most churches. They are trained to do this, for both discipline and effect I think.